


Adrift

by NoaVice



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Castiel centric, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Lost Castiel, M/M, Memories, Mutual Pining, Pining, Unacquired love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 16:02:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12039363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoaVice/pseuds/NoaVice
Summary: Castiel had to do it now. He was planning his escape since they brought him down here. When was that? He couldn't really tell. Could be days, could be years, could be millennia. All he knew was that he didn't change. Nothing changed here. He’d been doing the same thing over and over again. Roaming around, watching people he doesn't know screaming, fighting, killing the most precious figures in his life.





	Adrift

Castiel had to do it now. He was planning his escape since they brought him down here. When was that? He couldn't really tell. Could be days, could be years, could be millennia. All he knew was that he didn't change. Nothing changed here. He’d been doing the same thing over and over again. Roaming around, watching people he doesn't know screaming, fighting, killing the most precious figures in his life.

He couldn’t remember how he got here. All he could remember was that one second he was the youngest son of the bookkeeper in the Winchester mansion, doing errands for his dad and secretly watching the eldest Winchester son, Dean, with love and admiration. And the next, he was here, watching strangers repeatedly killing his dad, his brothers, Sam – Dean’s younger brother, and Dean. All he could do was roam around and watch. And plan his escape.

Today was the day. He had to do this. He was practicing his abilities for a while now. He knew he could fly. He knew that no one in this place could see him. He was here merely to watch, not to be watched. He knew he couldn’t go through walls, but he learned he could go through nets, like screen doors. He studied this place, this building in the middle of nowhere. So he thought. He never managed to see the outside. The ventilation came from somewhere down below. He decided that going down is the way out.

He took a deep breath, hoping that there really was no one watching him, and pushed himself as hard as he could against the metal grille covering the ventilation shaft. He felt himself becoming as light as mist, going through the thin metal bars of the cover. Or, to be accurate, the metal bars going through him. Inside the ventilation system, Castiel waited. He didn't hear anything unusual, only sounds of screaming and fighting. The fear and excitement of escaping enveloped every inch of his now weightless body. What if he could not really escape? What if this is another kind of torture, like watching his loved ones die over and over again?

A horrible sound snapped him out of his thoughts. The sound he hated the most. The sound he had to hear over and over again for who knows how long. The gasp of air as Dean was being killed by yet another unfamiliar face. All questions and doubts in his mind just vanished with that sound. Without even realizing what he was doing, Castiel flung himself down the shaft.

When he opened his eyes, he was outside. The street was strange, old brick buildings with iron railings surrounded by high fences. He didn't recognize where he was; he had never been here before. The sky looked different from the one he remembered. He remembered blue summer skies at the Winchester mansion, grey cloud-covered skies or pink, red and purple skies of sunsets. But he did not remember ever seeing a brown, smoky sky. It scared him. He needed to get going, to get as far away from where he was right now. He needed to find his family. He needed to find Dean.

But how? He had no idea where he was, what year it was, or even if Dean knew who he was. He was the son of the bookkeeper; Dean was the eldest Winchester son, the one who would eventually inherit the mansion from his father. The chances were Dean had never noticed him. Castiel used to run errands for his father. He roamed around the mansion, trying to be as unseen as possible, watching Dean as he went. Dean was perfect. He was tall, had light brown hair, broad shoulders, freckles, lush lips and a warm smile. He was kind and caring (the way he took care of his younger brother when their father, the all mighty Mr. John Winchester, was absent - which was almost always - was admirable). And he was, by far, so out of Castiel's league. That was why he tried to remain unseen then, and that was why he wasn't sure Dean even knew he was alive (was he alive? He was pretty sure he wasn't alive anymore, what with the flying and going through nets and all).

The fact was, Castiel didn’t care if Dean ever noticed him or not, he just had to see him again. He was in love with him since he could remember, and he had been witnessing strangers killing him for what felt like an eternity. He could not go on with those images scratched into his brain. He had to get some other images in there. After he would see Dean and put his mind at ease, he would be able to start figuring out all the rest.

But, how?

He had no body, no idea where or when he was, or where Dean was. He felt tears coming up his eyes. He was lost.

He was looking at the sky when the memory hit him. It was one of those stormy evenings they used to have when summer was coming to an end. Mr. Winchester was absent for two weeks and Dean was left, again, to watch over his younger brother, Sam.

His own brothers locked him out of his room again, so he was sitting on the top of the main stairs in a hidden spot, looking over the Winchesters' living room and listening to Dean telling his own version of Peter Pan to Sam. Sam was only four years old, which made Dean eight, and himself seven. He liked listening to Dean stories. He had this way of telling a story that made you feel like you were watching a movie, or like you were there, with the characters.

 

_"And when Mr. and Mrs. Darling closed the nursery door that night, they left behind Wendy, John and Michael in their beds, with their new adopted children. The end."_

_“It can’t be the end, Dean! What happened to Peter? After he was left alone?”_

_“I don’t know, Sammy. Probably went home to Neverland.”_

_“But he loves Wendy! What will happen if the Darlings move? How will he find them? It’s not fair!”_

_“Yeah, well, I don’t know.”_

_“So make something up! I want to know…”_

_“Sammy, I’m tired, and it’s getting late. Come on, let’s go to bed.”_

_“No! I can’t sleep now. Tell me how Peter will find Wendy if they move away.”_

_“Fine. Give me a minute… OK, here we go. You said that Peter loves Wendy. OK. So after a few weeks alone on the island, Peter figured out that he really loved Wendy, and that he was willing to grow old if it meant he will be growing old with her. So he said goodbye to Tinkerbelle and the mermaids and Tiger Lilli and the animals, and flew to London where he last saw Wendy. But when he got there, there was nothing there, not even the old house. Peter didn’t know what to do. He really wanted to see Wendy again. Then he thought ‘if flying required happy thoughts, maybe if I thought about Wendy and how much I love her and want to see her, the wind will carry me to wherever she is now.’ And that's what he did. He flew up to the sky, closed his eyes, thought of Wendy and let the wind carry him. When he opened his eyes, he was flying above a park, where he could see the Darling family (including all of the lost boys and Nana) having a picnic. He descended to the ground near them. When Wendy saw him, she ran to him and hugged him tight. Mr. and Mrs. Darling agreed to let him stay with them, and they lived happily ever after. There. Now can we go to sleep?”_

_“Yes. Thank you Dean, you’re the best!”_

 

Thinking about Dean. That he could do. Maybe it would work. He had nothing to lose.

Castiel let himself float up in the air. He closed his eyes, like he remembered from Dean’s story, and let his thoughts drift to better times. He saw Dean’s eyes, deep and green and shining. He saw Dean’s smile, warm and sincere as it lit up his face and made his eyes crinkle. He saw Dean’s body, tall and toned and young.

As those images ran through his mind, he could feel himself drifting through the air, the wind caressing his non-existing skin. It felt good, pure, like a memory Castiel wasn’t sure was his. It felt soft, promising, like a kiss. Like the first kiss he never had.

When he opened his eyes, he was there. Floating above the place he used to call home. It looked old, deserted even. The path that he used to run on to get his father’s stuff was almost invisible through the wild grass and thorn bushes growing all around.  All the flowers that used to blossom in the yard - Mary Winchester’s legacy, looked after by Dean himself - were gone. The white paint that used to cover the fences was now either chipped or missing. All the windows were closed. Castiel felt a pang go though his heart as he watched it. Was he too late? What if he will never find Dean again?

He flew around the big building looking for some sign of life, something to let him know that he was not too late. One of the windows was broken, shattered by a tree branch that somehow got jammed through it. The room it belonged to looked dark from where he hovered, but Castiel knew by its location that it was John and Mary Winchester's old bedroom. Their room was located above the Winchesters’ family garden. They received the fountain with two angels holding hands as a wedding gift from both their parents, according to the inscription on a plank attached to it. Castiel’s father told him once that the tree in front of the window was the one Mr. Winchester planted on the day Dean was born, and the one right next to it was the one he planted on the day Sam was. Mary put the bench under them, in front of the fountain. After Mary died in a house fire that started in Sam’s nursery when Sam was 6 months old, Mr. Winchester and Dean planted a Forget-Me-Not plant in her memory. A few days later, Mr. Winchester left for one of his long business trips for the first time. Castiel once heard Dean tell Sam that their mother used to tell him that whenever he is sad, he should come and sit on the bench and everything would be all right because angels were watching over him there.

He entered the room through the broken window. After being in the sunlight (was it morning or afternoon? Castiel wasn’t sure), it took him a minute or so to adjust to the darkness inside. The bedroom looked like it hadn’t been used in a long while; cob webs and a thick layer of dust covered everything. The door to the room was open and Castiel floated into the corridor that led down to the main hall of the place he used to call home. Everything was dark. The big sofa that Dean used to read stories to Sam on was still there, standing in front of the fireplace, but it was the only furniture there. All the chairs, the table, the pictures, everything that made this hall what it used to be, were gone. Hope was starting to drift away from him. No one was here in a long time, Dean was probably gone too. With the little hope still left in him, Castiel decided to check upstairs again and floated toward Dean’s and Sam’s rooms.

He was not supposed to go up to those rooms, his father forbade it. His job was to help his father, not to wander around the mansion to find out where the eldest of the Winchester brothers slept at night, but he did it anyway. Sometimes he used to sneak out of his room in the middle of the night and go check on the boys. First he would check on Sam, making sure he was asleep and adequately covered. After John left, Sam started having nightmares. He would toss and turn and sometimes kicked off the covers. It was the reason the brothers slept with their bedrooms doors open, it calmed Sam and kept most of his nightmares at bay. After Sam’s room he would go to Dean’s. He would stand at the doorway, making sure Dean was asleep, covered and safe, and then he just stayed for a while longer and watched him sleep. After some time he would start feeling guilty for acting like a creep and got back to his own bed, wondering what Dean was dreaming about.

Once more, Castiel was standing (sort of) at the doorway to Dean’s room. Only now, there was no one there. It looked exactly the way he remembered it, under the cob webs and dust. The bed was near the window and at the wall, to its left, stood Dean’s wardrobe. He had no table in his room; he and Sam did their homework in the main hall and used their rooms only for sleep. Near the bed was a small nightstand. Dean had a bedside lamp on it, so he could read at night, and a picture of his mom. The lamp was still there, but not the picture. Castiel’s heart sunk, he was too late. Dean was not here anymore. He would not have left without his mother’s picture.

Disappointed and heartbroken, Castiel decided to go to his old room before… what? He didn’t know what he would do now. All he wanted was to see Dean, but he was gone. Maybe Castiel will travel the world searching for another sign of him. Maybe... Now, though, all he wanted to do was lie down in his old bed and cry.

On the way to his own room he wandered through the other parts of the mansion. Everything looked the same as he remembered. When he got to his room, though, something was not quite right. He remembered that his bed was next to the door, not by the window. He also didn’t have a table that was now clearly there. Come to think of it, the room looked less dusty than the other rooms he went through earlier and there was a book on the table that didn’t look like anything Castiel had ever seen before.

Cautiously, and with a tiny glimmer of renewed hope, he approached the book, which under closer inspection turned out to be a leather-bound notebook. Hesitatingly, he opened its cover and gasped. Mary Winchester was smiling at him from a photograph tucked into the cover. Dean was here. With trembling hands, Castiel turned to the first page and started reading.

 

...

_So Sammy gave me this notebook today for my birthday. Yeah, I'm 10 now.  He said this is real leather and stuff. Said I can use it to write all the stories I make up for him when he gets bored and wants some entertainment. Maybe I will. I don't know. Kinda like the fact that they are just made up and gone. Maybe I'll just write whatever. ‘Cause I get kinda bored too sometimes. Everybody here are all grownups (accept Sammy, but he is 6, so he doesn't count). Oh, and we have a ghost here, I swear! I always see blue eyes everywhere, here and there disappearing. I asked dad if we had ghosts here. He just laughed at me and went back to his work. He went away for 6 months after that._

_Yeah, so maybe I'll just write here when I'm bored instead of just walking around this place doing nothing._

_Gotta go now, need to make food for Sammy and me (I don't understand why we don't have a cook, but I don't mind cooking, It's actually really fun)._

...

Blue eyes? Disappearing? Did Dean think he was a ghost?

Castiel kept on flipping through the pages of what he now knew was Dean's private diary. He felt wrong doing so, but if there was a clue in there on where Dean was now, he had to find out.

…

_Great, I'm sick. Red nose, headaches, fever, the whole shebang. I hate being sick. Can't do anything. Can't even get out of bed. So boring._

_Sammy came to bring me tea and soup earlier. I told him that it's not his job to take care of me. It's my job to take care of him. He called me a jerk and told me that I can't do that when I can't even breathe through my nose. That bitch! I have one job - taking care of Sammy, and I can't even do that right. Dad would be so pleased, NOT! But no one knows where he is anyways, so why should I care what he thinks? He left us. But a seven-year-old boy should not worry about his 11-year-old brother. It's just not right. And mom made me promise I'll be a big boy and look after Sammy. And I am a big boy! But this stupid fever just keeps running._

_Something weird just happened. Someone is humming 'Hey Jude' somewhere outside. I wonder who that is… It was the song mom used to sing to me whenever I was sick or when she wanted me to sleep. I miss her. But this is actually nice._

_Anyways, I think I'll go nap now._

...

Castiel remembered that day. He saw Sam making tomato and rice soup alone in the kitchen. Tomato and rice soup was what Mary used to make for Dean when he was sick, and what Dean made for Sam when he was sick since Mary had died. When Castiel thought about it, he didn't see Dean the whole day. He put two and two together and came to the conclusion that Dean must have fallen ill.

He remembered deciding to take his math homework outside, sit under Dean's window and do it while humming the tune 'Hey Jude' (he remembered Dean saying it was his mom's favorite song) in hope that it will make Dean feel better. Castiel smiled to himself; apparently it worked.

He flipped through more pages.

…

_So Bobby came to me today and said that it's time I started working on dad's Impala if I wanted her working for my 18 th birthday. Hell yeah, I want her! Dad left her here to rust and just disappeared, so she'll be mine. I'll take good care of her. She'll be my baby. Tomorrow we'll start working on the engine, working from the inside out. Make her as good as new, even better than that._

...

The Impala was a big, black, beast of a car. The thought of Dean having it as his own car made Castiel smile.

…

_I just read back to the beginning of this journal and discovered I once thought the bookkeeper's youngest boy was a ghost. That's hilarious! Castiel? Cas? A ghost? More of an angel in my opinion. Not that he'll ever know that. Not that anyone else will know that. They'll laugh at me for sure. Dean Winchester, John's son, the dream of every girl, having a crush on a boy. And not just any boy, an angel of a boy._

_I don't think he knows I see him. He is very shy, I think. But he is so smart. I heard him talk to his brothers once and he knew more than all of them combined. And he always helps his father. I see him carrying stuff for him all the time. And he is also very strong and brave. Bobby told me that he beat up two guys who had tried to break into our house while bobby called the cops. It was when Sam and I were visiting Allen. And he runs every morning. I watch him through my window. He always wears very short shorts and he looks goddamn good in them. God, I sound like a 13 years old girl…_

_Maybe I'll just talk to him, ask him if he wanted to help Bobby and me with the Impala. That could be a start. Maybe he'll see that I'm not as stupid like everybody thinks I am (except Bobby and Sam, they think I'm a genius and I don't want to break their hearts, telling them that they’re wrong). Maybe we could be friends. I'll settle for friendship._

…

So Dean did know who he was, and had a crush on him??? He thought Dean had never noticed him. He tried so hard not to be noticed. And still... Dean wanted to talk to him, to be his friend. But he never asked him to help with the Impala. Castiel turned the page, curious to see why.

…

_Car engines are AWESOME! So many parts! We worked for most of the day and I’m beat. Going to make food and then to sleep._

_I didn't see Cas all day today, I hope he's all right. I guess I'll have to talk to him tomorrow._

…

Castiel flipped to the next page.

…

_Fuck! No one knows where Cas is. All his stuff is still here but no one saw him for two days. We looked everywhere. Mr. Chuck drove all around town and asked around but nothing. Bobby said that if he won’t come back until tomorrow they’ll call the police. Shit!_

…

He was missing for two days? When was that? He couldn’t remember a day when he wasn’t home, not until he… Castiel could feel his face turn white (could he turn white?). That was when he got there, to that awful place he just escaped from.

He kept on reading.

…

_It’s been a week since Cas has disappeared. First the police thought he was kidnapped, but no ransom was asked and there were no signs of struggle anywhere. Now they say he probably ran away. His brothers blame themselves for that, but I don’t think that’s the case. If he ran away, why didn’t he take any of his things with him? Mr. Chuck said that nothing was missing from his belongings; all his clothes and school materials were accounted for. I really hope nothing bad has happened to him. I hope he’s alive. I hope he’ll come back. I miss his eyes looking at me when he thinks I haven't noticed. I miss his kind smile. I wish I told him that I knew he was looking at me and that I liked him. Please, Cas, come back._

…

With tears in his eyes, Castiel kept on reading. The next few pages were full of descriptions of Dean's days and how he was worried about Castiel being gone; prayers for him to return. There were very detailed accounts of Dean's failed attempts at finding him. After a while the descriptions got shorter and shorter, until only big events were mentioned. But always, no matter what he wrote, he ended with the same sentence.

…

_We finished fixing Baby, My Impala. Cas is still missing._

…

_Sammy got accepted to Stanford. Cas is still missing._

…

_Mr. Chuck and Cas’ brothers left today. Cas is still missing._

…

_Sammy graduated pre-law and got himself a girlfriend. Cas is still missing._

…

_Sam is getting married. Cas is still missing._

…

_Bobby died today. Cas is still missing._

…

_Sam named his son Henry-Robert. Cas is still missing._

…

_Sam named his daughter Mary-Allen. Cas is still missing._

…

After that, there were pages upon pages filled with only one thing.

…

_Cas is still missing._

_Cas is still missing._

_Cas is still missing._

_Cas is still missing…_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to @matan4il and Alina for their beta reading and input.


End file.
